


all hearts are open

by tomatocages (kittu9)



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Canon Jewish Character, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Marriage of Convenience, Michigan, No Plot/Plotless, Road Trips, Secret Marriage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-02-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 05:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittu9/pseuds/tomatocages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So: Felicity marries Oliver at the end of autumn. Digg and Thea are witnesses because Sara is still pretending she's dead, they're in Detroit, and Felicity would cheerfully smother herself before announcing to all and sundry that this is not how she used to imagine her wedding.</p><p>But—and this important—<i>Felicity</i> marries <i>him</i>.</p><p> (Indeterminate Future, probable AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Multiverse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146578) by [jaegermighty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaegermighty/pseuds/jaegermighty). 



> The one where they get married. (This was supposed to be hand-waves and short and sweet. Best two of three?) Tangentially inspired by jaegermighty's [multiverse drabbles](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1146578/chapters/2322205), which are much cuter and more emotionally satisfying than this, so I understand if you'd like to go read those. 
> 
> Set in an indeterminate future where Thea and Sara have joined the team, because _obviously_.

 

"You don't have to do this," Oliver says, just like Digg had said, like Officer-Detective Lance would say if they just told him what was going on before what Felicity will always think of, with capital letters, as The Michigan Trip. She's just laid all the cards on the table, from her shambling career to Oliver's penchant for getting injured on the job (exhibit A, the gang bust he just got back from, and not entirely in one piece) to the increasing likelihood of either one of them getting charged with criminal conduct. It's an ugly picture and there aren't a lot of outs left, not for Felicity Smoak. But here's the thing: when it comes down to Arrow business, Felicity has always made her own choice.

"Yes, I do," she says. 

Oliver makes an abortive gesture, like he might stop her, or like he's stopping himself from touching her. "Felicity," he says. Oliver can say her name and Felicity will always hear everything he can't articulate: _Felicity, talk to me. Felicity, tell me where to go. Felicity, why haven't you broken into that federal database for me yet. Felicity, please stop making awkward sexual references, just move on and try not to swallow your tongue._ Right now he means: _please don't let me hurt you any more._

Felicity lifts her chin, so she's looking right up at him. He looks terrible: there's a bruise coming up beneath the stubble on his jaw, he has at least two cracked ribs, and she knows his leathers didn't keep him from scraping his hip when his motorcycle spun out. Oliver looks back at her for a too-long count of five like he always does, and then he looks away. Felicity lets him. 

"She knows what she's doing," Sara says, which is the kind of lie Sara has no business spouting. Felicity appreciates it anyway. "And it's not the worst idea any of you has ever had." This _is_ true, but you don't have to work in the same city as the Arrow to know it isn't a particularly high bar. 

But this is Felicity's choice—Felicity, who has been choosing Oliver, and choosing to show Oliver parts of himself he would not otherwise recognize, since the start.

 

+

 

So: Felicity marries Oliver at the end of autumn. The weather's been a little out-of-season all year, and it's warm still. Digg is there, and Sara, and Thea, too, after driving all night. 

It's not a glamorous affair. Felicity isn't wearing a new or even a very nice dress, no one is smiling, and Oliver is probably bleeding under that shirt, but he won't let anyone check. 

Felicity does the necessary paperwork—even if she hadn't been good at computers, one benefit of living in Oliver's back pocket for the last few years was remembering his social security number better than her own—and she pays the extra ten dollars in order to waive the three-day wait period once the license is granted. Digg and Thea are witnesses because Sara is still pretending she's dead. They sign some papers and the judge seals the record, and—that's pretty much it. They're in Detroit, a little less than fifteen minutes away from the Canadian border, and Felicity would cheerfully smother herself before announcing to all and sundry that this is not what she imagined her wedding would be like.

But—and this important— _Felicity_ marries _him_.

 

+

 

The marriage is a judicial secret, on account of Oliver’s celebrity—Felicity never thought she’d be thankful for his terrible reputation, but at least it means the judge just rolls her eyes and signs the papers—and the whole thing is accomplished with an astonishing lack of fuss. Which is funny: Felicity is used to their plans going _horribly awry_.

“I solemnly swear,” Digg says, to try and take Felicity’s mind off the license burning a hole in her purse, “that from now on, I will only say nice things about Detroit.” 

She shoves him, gently because it wouldn’t make any difference if she put any weight into it. Digg leans down and kisses her cheek; he’s the only person who does kiss her, once the civil ceremony is over. It reminds Felicity of when they three were in Russia, with the roles reversed. Also, they are less likely to die in a prison bust.

“I’m sure the Motor City appreciates your restraint,” is all she says. “Does everyone have their passport, or the closest approximation?” 

Sara rolls her eyes at that. She has a gift: Felicity hasn’t ever met anyone else who could treat her with all the earmarks of condescension and have it come off as affection, but Sara is special. She’d started the car as soon as Felicity and Oliver walked out of the county marriage department, Digg and Thea flanking them, and even though she’s driving a too-small sedan, they all manage to get squashed inside. Digg gets the front, Thea—who has the shortest legs—sits behind him, and Oliver kind of flops in behind Sarah. Felicity sits bitch, pulling in her shoulders so Oliver has room to breathe, and stares at the parking stub from the DIA on Sara’s dash.

“Don’t worry,” Sara says, reversing out of her parking space. “I got you postcards.”

They go through the Windsor Tunnel, and that gets them to Canada without any more than the usual fuss, possibly because Thea had the sense to set up a Nexpress account for the toll.

(“My god,” she’d said, when Oliver had explained that the plan was to drive through Ontario and basically pretend nothing was weird or even unusual about him being on the opposite side of the country with all the wrong people and absolutely no good reason. “It’s kind of miraculous you haven’t, like, completely sabotaged yourself without me around.” Then Felicity had set up a secure network and Thea used a Visa giftcard—“better than traveler’s checks!”—to make the initial deposit.)

There's no wedding night, not in the traditional sense. They meet up in Toronto with enough bad road behind them that even Oliver looks ready to protest. His cough is a little worse; Felicity is a little more worried about those ribs.

Sara gets them into some safehouse she set up after she left the League and Oliver passes out on the floor—mercifully _after_ Felicity had put down a clean towel and at least gotten him to use a pillow, which was, sadly, progress. 

Digg tries to stand guard, but Sara ignores him gently until he stops, and Felicity and Thea sit together on one of the two queen (ha. Queen) beds. Thea very carefully paints Felicity's nails an awful beige color and doesn't welcome her to the family; once the varnish dries, Felicity returns the favor. Oliver doesn't move or snore or really give much indication that he’s still alive, and finally Thea slides off the bed and sits next to him on the floor so she can at least make sure he’s still breathing. Thea watches Oliver breathe for almost a quarter-hour, until she falls asleep next to him and Felicity doesn't have to ask Digg to help put her to bed. Under the covers, her hair wild around her face, Thea looks about twelve years old.

Oliver has always had Thea to come home to. That’s not why Felicity married him.

 

+

 

Sara’s safehouse isn’t really a house. It’s a garden apartment. There’s the bedroom with its two beds and its two sleeping Queens, a combined kitchen and living area with a table and a fireplace, a bathroom with a tub that’s probably not big enough for either Oliver or Diggle, and closet-like back room that opens into a little courtyard. The neighbors upstairs are renting the place out in AirBnB; right now it’s empty.

The kitchen is sort of woeful. Sara goes out and buys “essentials,” which is a Sara-ism for protein bars, a dozen eggs, and instant coffee. Diggle eats half the eggs, hardboiled and without salt, and finally crashes on the empty bed.

Later, Oliver wakes and comes out into the kitchen. Felicity is looking at QC spreadsheets in one half of her tablet screen and watching a muted episode of The Middleman in the other half. The hot water jug isn’t quite empty—Sara made her a cup of cocoa before going out on patrol—and Oliver uses an Ikea drinking glass what’s left of the hot water to make himself tea with those stupid herbs from the Island. Felicity isn’t sure how he hasn’t run out yet. She wonders if he’s planning to put in a little indoor garden in part of the lair, once they get back; it’s not a bad idea. She thinks she could make a greenhouse.

Oliver stands in the middle of the room, a little back from where Felicity is sitting at the table; she turns to look at him while he takes his time drinking his tea, pausing every now and then to cough. When he finishes he holds the glass for a minute--for less than a minute, for not very long at all—before he hurls it across the room and into the empty fireplace. It makes a terrible noise. 

"There," he says. "We got married today. That makes it a wedding, right?" 

"Oh," Felicity says, and stops short, and starts talking again. "It was just a civil wedding, Oliver. You break a glass—it’s a tradition. To temper joy."

Oliver's jaw kind of works while he thinks about that information. Oliver is the broken part of this marriage, Felicity thinks: she didn't need him to break a glass, too. “Huh,” he says, finally. “D’you think my ribs counted?” 

“Doubtful,” she manages. “That was before we decided to do the deed. Um.” 

Oliver sighs. It’s a familiar sound: by now, Felicity knows that he’s faking most of his exasperation at her malapropisms. She appreciates him trying to set her at ease, even if it’s not helping.

“How’s Thea?” he asks. That’s Oliver Queen for you: when in doubt, change the subject.

“She’s in better shape than you are,” Felicity says. “But you know what they say: no rest for the wicked. Why don’t you pull up a chair, if you’re not going to sleep again; we have to be back in Starling City next Tuesday, and you still haven’t read the minutes from the last board meeting. Or reviewed the budget. Or replied to, like, the last six emails Isabel has sent you.”

When he sits next to her and cranes his head over her shoulder, she opens the spreadsheet in the full screen and scrolls back to the executive summary so he can start from the top.

 

+

 

Oliver’s dating life took a palpable hit when he became the vigilante and it’s only gotten worse since he took over at Queen Consolidated. Even so, in the months after Michigan, he stops sleeping around completely and just starts exercising an almost desperate, confirmed bachelor-esque charm. Felicity, whose dating life was nil before she met Oliver, and who lost all understanding of _personal time_ once she did, tries not to let it register.

“This is painful,” Thea says one evening. She’s come down from the club to keep Felicity company while Diggle and Oliver patrol the Glades. “It’s like rooting for the B characters in a regency novel.” 

“I knew you were literate,” is all Felicity says.

Thea scoffs and hoists herself onto Felicity’s counter, pokes absently at the Detroit Institute of Arts postcard Sara taped to an auxiliary monitor. “You didn’t hear it from me.”

 

+

 

Later, months later, she’ll say something flippant, as though it’s a very small thing: _I’d tell you to be careful out there, but I married you so I don't have to testify against you either way._ (So far, it’s been pretty cheap insurance. Felicity can find the answer to anything: her preferred method of avoiding arrest is to not talk about what she knows, though that’s an option that is rapidly falling off the table.)

Oliver will pause in the act of putting up his hood and look over at her, for that too-long count of five, before he finishes the motion. When he comes home—back—for the night, the laptop he was after will still be in one piece, and so will he.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The more things change, the more they stay the same. After Detroit, Oliver studies Felicity and, as usual, doesn’t know quite what to make of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [veryplatoniccircunstances](http://veryplatoniccircunstances.tumblr.com/) prompted: _established olicity (but kinda new relationship), and Felicity say she needs the night off to have dinner with a friend or whoever. Except she's having dinner with her mom, and randomly Oliver is havin dinner maybe with THea/Roy or just Diggle, whatever, at the same restaurant. As Felicity introduces him as her boss and only that and he's confused an kinda hurt. You can change whatever you want !!! :) THANK YOU !_
> 
> So naturally this happened.

Felicity hands Oliver a bulging folder as she tells him she needs the evening off, a prospect so alien to everything Oliver knows and trusts about her that he accidentally gives himself a papercut.

"You want the evening off? That is...unexpected." He looks down at her—she wore flats to the office today, she hasn't done that since she became his EA—and notices that she's changed clothes since this morning. That’s not unusual; she keeps a few sets of clothes in the office for when they’re working late, just like Oliver keeps at least one spare suit on hand. What’s unusual is what she’s changed into: a dark skirt, one of those little jewel-colored sweater sets she used to wear back in IT, her hair is tied low at her neck and covering the tops of her ears. She—doesn't look much like Felicity at all, actually, or at least not much like Felicity as Oliver has come to know her.

"It's not unprecedented," she says. She sounds absolutely normal. "I mean, you gave me the evening off when I had my well woman's exam last month, not that getting a pap smear is a vacation, let me tell you, and there was also that time Thea needed someone over twenty-one to visit vendors with her."

Oliver licks his papercut, mostly to buy some time and a little to keep from smearing blood on another interoffice memo. "Felicity," he says, "is there something going on that we need to talk about?"

"I'm fine," she says. Her lipstick is as brilliant and improbably perfect as usual. "You know me."

Oliver really, really doesn't.

 

+

 

They're in the middle of an intelligence op—at the stage where they’re taking turns sifting through data, so it doesn’t really matter that Felicity’s gone for the night. Sara informs him that she's not going out on an Arrow patrol just because he doesn’t want to take his turn, and heads out to do her feminist crusader patrol instead (Diggle volunteers to take the comms, and Sara tells Oliver that he’s not welcome to join in: "All you do is breathe heavily over the communication channel, and if you come with you’ll just trigger someone. Leave it, Ollie." Oliver really hates it when she calls him that).

Oliver could probably figure out how to read the readouts from Felicity's latest search results, but: he doesn't want to. The way Felicity was dressed still strikes him oddly, and he feels off-balance. Sara’s not wrong; Oliver would just be a nuisance if he went along on her patrol.

He pretends to look over the documents anyway, trying and failing to keep them in the order Felicity outlined on blue post-it notes during the last team briefing. It’s almost as bad as the QC paperwork he’s avoiding—those files have little pink post-it notes on them, to keep Oliver form bringing the wrong folder to the office. This is probably why Felicity prefers using a tablet: everything stays in one place.

"Well, well," Thea says, breaking his concentration. She's at the top of the stairs, leaning far enough over the railing that Oliver actually worries she'll pitch forward and fall. Thea's been hanging around downstairs more and more lately, if the stack of romance novels by Felicity's desk is any sign—Thea devours them. Oliver walked in on one of Thea’s dramatic readings last week; she makes up voices for each of the characters and acts out the more fraught scenes, and it makes Felicity laugh. "If your lady wife has finally found the sense to leave your sorry ass, I say you buy me dinner. Don't bother drowning your sorrows, I probably won't commiserate. It’s your own fault for not putting out." 

"Don't call her that," Oliver says. He still doesn’t know how he feels about what happened in Detroit. He thinks about it a lot: his broken ribs, the interminable drive to Toronto, the look on Felicity's face when she signed the marriage certificate. "And she's not—it’s not—she can have a night off."

"Dinner," Thea growls at him. She sounds like a smoker, or a maybe an irate guinea pig. "I want ceviche."

Digg looks up from his own computer, his usual look of amused omnipotence firmly in place. Oliver tries to ignore how his team is starting to form alliances within the larger group, but Diggle is a fervent believer in interjecting his own commentary into all of Oliver's interactions. Diggle can land a significant number of hits when he and Oliver spar; that means Oliver has to listen.

"I'd listen to her, if I were you," he says. "You might be bigger, but my money's on her in a fight. She has better tactical awareness." He winks outrageously in Thea's direction and Thea blows him a kiss. When, Oliver wonders, did all of his friends decide to desert him? 

"I'll take you," he says. "But we're driving."

"I love Diggle best, he can be my brother," Thea says. "And one day I'm going to drive that stupid bike of yours, you'll see."

Oliver's actually little surprised she hasn't snaked the keys yet. "I still know about all your stuffed animals," he threatens, starting up the stairs.

"I'm adorable, it's a symptom of my affluenza, no deep dark secrets there," Thea says. "What did they teach you on that island, how to fight like a fifth-grade girl?"

 

+

 

The restaurant is semi-deserted, and established enough that the owner isn't impressed by the double-threat of two Queens showing up and requesting a table. Thea slides into the seat closest to the wall and Oliver drags his chair around next to her; he hates having his back to the room.

"Good call, easier to people-watch," is all Thea says. She slides her arm around Oliver's, moving him out of the way of her menu. "And fuck ceviche, I was lying, they have arepas. I want at least six."

"You're terrifying," Oliver says. He's suddenly glad they're out together. It's a belated thought; there’s a lot on his mind.

"Don't tell," Thea drawls. "It's a secret." She tosses her hair and Oliver is a struck by how elegant his little sister is. She's a small person, compared to him, but her presence is impossible.

They order the arepas. Thea actually orders several other things, but South American fusion and also Thea's apparent fluency in Spanish is beyond him. Oliver just hopes it's not all tiny food.

It's after the plate of arepas comes—Thea is describing plantains using as many lewd gestures as possible, he’s pretending she doesn’t know the meaning of any of those words tumbling out of her mouth—that Oliver sees Felicity sitting across the way. It startles him: he wasn't expecting to see her, even if the thought of her was at the back of his mind. He's just—familiar with the way she shakes her head right before she gathers her thoughts, familiar with how the light catches her. The movement is what caught his eye.

"Eyes over here," Thea says when she notices, suddenly serious, suddenly wiser than Oliver remembers her being. In his heart, she's still about twelve. "Oliver. You don't get to see her like this."

She's right: Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak work together, but Oliver doesn't officially recognize Felicity when she's not following him in a professional capacity. There's no reason for him to fixate on her sitting in a restaurant after COB on a Tuesday evening, eating dinner with a woman Oliver has never seen before.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He folds his napkin next to his plate and stands. “I’ll be right back.”

Felicity seems him coming. Oliver wonders if she always will.

It’s not the first time they’ve spoken in public, outside of their respective circles, but it’s the first time he hasn’t even had a lame excuse to back him up.

“Hey,” he starts.

"Mr. Queen,” Felicity says. “Good evening.”

The woman with her barely looks over at him, even when Felicity turns back to her, trying to achieve eye contact. “Mother," Felicity says, "this is my boss, Oliver Queen. Mr. Queen—my mother, Elizabeth Smoak."

Oliver has known Felicity for a long time now. Normally when she's unhappy, she gets a tone in her voice, low and tenacious. Right now, she's so poised that his default response is to ignore her. It's disconcerting.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," he says. It isn't, really. Elizabeth has an angry, half-awake look on her face that Oliver's only seen on drug addicts, and he can't get over the fact that Felicity's introduction is so succinct. There should be more to it, he thinks; more to how people recognize Oliver and Felicity and the fact that the two of them are partners.

Elizabeth Smoak—looks through him. She does and does not look like her daughter: they have a similar build (Elizabeth is thinner) and dissimilar coloring (Elizabeth has darker hair, more freckles), and her face is the wrong shape: pinched and hungry and just _done_ with what's going on around her. She looks like Felicity might look, if Oliver's nightmares come to life and he keeps letting her down: resentful, bitter, hurt. It frightens Oliver; it doesn’t help that’s she’s wearing a cardigan Felicity used to wear but doesn’t anymore.

Felicity doesn't seem to notice it, but she's also wearing a maddeningly serene expression, one that Oliver knows the feel but not the look of. Oliver—runs out of words at the sight of her. He think about the way Felicity once described her mother: _she’s my mother_.

"Felicity, hey," Thea drawls, coming up to stand beside him. Oliver’s not sure if he’s being rescued; Thea wraps her fingers around Oliver's forearm and digs her sharp little nails into the soft skin near his elbow, almost enough to hurt. It wakes Oliver up a little, but not nearly enough, and Thea just keeps talking: "Fancy meeting you here! The arepas are great, right? Such a good concept. Make sure you try the eggplant thing. Anyway, just thought we’d say hi ‘n bye, hope we didn’t interrupt!" 

Oliver lets her guide him away from Felicity's table, Felicity and her mother, the untouchable look on Felicity's face. If they were having a conversation before he walked over, he does not hear it resume. 

"God, it's like you've never been in a delicate situation before, good job fucking it up!" Thea hisses dramatically. In retaliation, he moves the chimichurri out of her reach.

"I can say hello to my EA," he starts, but Thea isn't done. No shock there: She was with them in Detroit. She was one of the only witnesses. 

"I swear to Christ," she says, "you're the physical embodiment of a train wreck. She did not want you there. You make her life harder ninety-seven percent of the time. Ollie, we only eat out with Mom when we need witnesses to keep us from scratching each other’s eyes out."

Oliver understands, then: the last thing he needs when he's around his mother is for someone else to notice that he's not all right. It’s more than maintaining a public face: sometimes, still, Oliver looks at his mother and loves her, despite what she has done and despite what she has failed to do. It’s wired into him: he wouldn’t be surprised if that love was in the marrow of his bones.

"I didn't know," he says.

"Obviously," Thea snaps. He hands her the chimichurri again and she dunks a plantain chip in it, viciously. Absently, Oliver wonders how long she’ll carry the smell of garlic on her. "God, it's Felicity. For someone who can't stop staring at her, you're incapable of reading her."

"She's her own person," Oliver says, stung. "But she doesn't keep secrets."

"You're just not used to her keeping secrets from _you_ ," Thea says. "Otherwise, that's about all Felicity does."        

He would argue with her, but Thea has a point. Here is what Oliver knows about Felicity: she’s good with computers, she keeps his secrets, she went to MIT, her father abandoned her, and she never talks about her mother.

Here’s what else: Oliver would never have married her if Felicity hadn’t made a reasonable argument for the benefits that came with the institution, but now that he is, legally, her husband—he’d like it to mean something.

Oliver fakes a call halfway through the entrée and drops a fifty on the table, rather than sit through the remainder of a meal with Felicity in the corner of his peripheral vision. Thea knocks back the last third of Oliver’s slowly warming 5Rabbit and follows him, ignoring his raised eyebrow. 

“Like anyone ever actually calls you,” she says, unperturbed. “Let me guess, your last five incoming calls are: Felicity, me, Diggle, Felicity, Felicity.”

Thea’s not wrong. “None of your beeswax,” Oliver says. 

“Ollie,” Thea says, in tones of intense pity, “Nobody even says that.”

 

+

 

Oliver drives them back to the foundry and tries to work out; Thea follows him and sits at the edge of the mats, reading loudly from one of her regency novels. 

“Cut that out,” Oliver snarls. Thea has perfected the art of projecting her voice just enough that Oliver can’t help but listen. It’s…distracting. 

“No,” she says. “Go home and pretend to sleep, or else I’ll find a sex scene and change all the names so it just sounds like people you know.” She flips forward a few pages. “Ohh, this looks like a good one; there’s cunnilingus. Let’s see—” 

Oliver slips down off the salmon ladder and rolls his shoulders. “Fine. Fine! God, you are such a brat.”

She sticks her tongue out at him. “I’m delightful. Go shower, you stink.”

She’s still there when he steps out, rubbing his head dry with a hand towel. 

“Go home,” he says. 

“That’s my line,” Thea answers. She dangles the car keys in front of her; about six months ago, she talked Diggle into adding one of those novelty key chains to it, and now a purple _Bee and Puppycat_ cartoon character hangs morosely next to the fob. Oliver thinks she had remote start installed around the same time. “I’m your ride.”

 

 

+

 

Felicity is at her desk when Oliver drags himself to the office in the morning. Today she’s wearing an electric blue dress; he thinks it’s the one she was wearing when they jumped out that window. It’s bright in the office in the mornings, and she’s stuck a post-it note to the arm of her glasses to keep the sun out of her eyes. 

“You know, you can lower the blinds,” he says, passing over her Starbucks order.

“It’s not worth it,” she says. Her voice is a little hoarse. He wonders if she had trouble sleeping. Oliver watches as she takes a long swallow from her coffee; she closes her eyes while she drinks, and the sun in the room highlights her face to the point where he can no longer make out her specific features. “The sun’s gonna move eventually, that means I’m the winner.” 

His jokes are always very little, but he tries anyway. “Does that make you an immoveable object?” 

She leans out of the light and looks up at him, blinking. Oliver wonders if she’s seeing him, or just sunspots. “It means I’m staying right where I am.”

“Felicity,” he says, slowly, dawdling over the feel of her name in his mouth, “you know you can talk to me."

“’Course,” she says. She’s smiling, and it looks easy on her face, too easy, like she’s been practicing it for years. Her mouth is the same color as the sun rising. “Will that be all, Mr. Queen?”

He’d almost forgotten they were at work, until she called him that—she rarely calls him by name at the office, unless he’s flustered her first. It’s a distancing technique. Both of them use it. 

Oliver wants—to tell her that he’s never understood her, or that he still feels like he should have kissed her after they’d signed that marriage certificate, or that sometimes he dreams about her. He wants to ask her why she was so polite to him last night, and what her mother was doing in town, if she’s still in town, if there’s anything Oliver can do to help. Instead, he takes a deliberate step to the side, until he casts a shadow over her desk. 

“That’s all for now,” is all he says, respectful of the space she’s put between them. “But if things change, I’m right here.”

**Author's Note:**

> Caveat: I have more than likely made a lot of mistakes here, but yes, Michigan is one of two states in the U.S. where you can get a secret judicial marriage (i.e., where the marriage record is sealed and not made public; it cannot be requested by journalists, which is why so many celebrities have secret weddings). 
> 
> These characters have me in a tailspin. Send help.


End file.
